TNS integrates Radianz, Exegy reduces latency, BondXN allies with BlackRock, and more

Got that Friday feeling? Good! That means you’re gonna email me over the weekend with all the info about what you’re working on? Well, think about it… Have a read of some of the news from this week, such as how TNS will incorporate Radianz into its business, and how MSCI has purchased…

Announced this week

TNS combines financial markets unit, rebrands Radianz 

TNS has launched Waypoint Trading Solutions, a combination of its financial markets business unit and new acquisition Radianz to deliver a high-performance infrastructure for financial markets. 

Waypoint comprises Radianz, Xpress, and Sentinel, with Radianz offering the world’s largest financial extranet, Xpress providing a managed low-latency platform for high-performance access to exchanges, and Sentinel offering a managed market data solution to support complex data operations. Waypoint is used at more than 180 exchanges and 6,500 markets spanning 70 countries, where it is used by more than 1,000 financial institutions.

Exegy slashes tech stack latency by 71% 

Ticker plant and market data technology provider Exegy has enhanced its FPGA-based trading engine, nxAccess, with Session Override and expanded connectivity features, delivering a 71% reduction in execution-stack latency.

Session Override allows firms to monitor session performance in real time and uses an algorithm to select the best-performing session as local-exchange or network-link latency fluctuates throughout the day.

BondXN, BlackRock Aladdin partner on MBS trading 

Electronic trading platform and data venue for mortgage-backed securities BondXN has partnered with BlackRock and its Aladdin platform for a multi-year partnership that will provide Aladdin clients with access to BondXN’s Specified Pool and TBA trading capabilities.

Clients of both will also have access to BondXN’s BWIC workflows, dealer inventories, and screening tools. Under the agreement, orders from Aladdin will flow to BondXN, allowing users to source liquidity, engage multiple dealers, and straight-through process trades in Aladdin.

Australia’s NSX taps Aquis for trading platform 

The National Stock Exchange of Australia has struck a deal to use the Aquis Equinox matching engine from Aquis Exchange in a new trading platform, alongside advanced market surveillance tools.

“This investment and the roll-out of Aquis Equinox will bring a trading platform with cutting edge low-latency and the highest order volume capacity to the Australian market,” says Max Cunningham, CEO and managing director of NSX. “This will enable new product roll-out and materially improve broker connectivity to trade securities on NSX.”

BestEx Research launches dark algorithm dubbed Curator 

BestEx Research, a provider of algorithmic execution and measurement solutions, has launched Curator, a dark execution algorithm that uses a research-based, systematic approach to “filtering toxic interactions” on alternative trading systems. 

The firm developed Curator to curate liquidity based on study of ATS-N filings and to identify where counterparty filtering is beneficial. It accounts for whether a firm is taking or adding liquidity to deploy real-time signals. Without this, traders can be exposed—whether they know it or not—to execution quality erosion.

MSCI buys PM Insights to boost transparency in private markets 

Index and risk management provider MSCI has acquired PM Insights, a provider of private markets data and analytics including pricing, valuation, transaction and liquidity reference data for private company securities.

Executives say the acquisition will advance MSCI’s plan to bring institutional-grade data, pricing transparency, and analytics to investing in private assets. PM Insights aggregates proprietary data from broker-dealers and bank secondary desks for private companies with a combined market capitalization of more than $5.5 trillion.

What you might have missed from us

Re-engineering reconciliations: User-initiated AI cuts recs from days to minutes

Prasanna Anandan, SVP and senior lead software engineer in the Site Reliability Engineering business line at a G-Sib bank, describes her experience overhauling her bank’s breakdown of bottlenecks tied to batch scheduling by embedding an AI-driven, user-initiated interface.

Blue water rafting: How RBC’s AI Group is navigating the AI rapids

After 28 years at IBM, some would be hanging up their hat and moving on. But not Bruce Ross, who moved to RBC and this year was named head of the bank’s AI Group, as the bank plans to invest more in AI and in a governance layer to minimize the risks of agentic AI. Eliot Raman Jones reports.

Taking tokenization from pilot to playbook

Looking at examples from multiple parties, Asia editor Wei-Shen Wong talks to Broadridge about the tokenization tussle, and concludes that firms should find specific use cases that bring immediate value, rather than trying everything at once, in the latest IMD Wrap.

SFC lifts lid on new Hong Kong FIC trading platform

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission has unveiled details for a new fixed income and currency trading platform for the offshore renminbi market set to rival execution venues Bloomberg and Tradeweb, reports Risk.net’s Jiefei Liu.

In other news

These cities and states are taking aim at datacenters, The Wall Street Journal 

Max Rust and Will Parker write on the growing backlash against the electrical and environmental impact of hyperscale datacenters in certain states, with more than 10 states banning new datacenter construction this year, following the example set by dozens of county and city governments. The growth in new building is being driven by artificial intelligence. 

Virginia and Texas lead the US in datacenter builds, with almost 1,000 facilities between them. The article includes a map of any existing and planned anti-datacenter laws.

My take is that this is a first step in consumer protection, but leaves several questions, such as whether this will impede the financial industry’s use of generic datacenters and whether the US risks being overtaken by countries without such legislation.

Got thoughts to share? News to include? Want to share something over the weekend now you’ve had a good read and are up to date? You know where to find us: max.bowie@infopro-digital.com